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44 The Dairyman JANUARY 2010
OPINION
WHEN the dawn broke on
Christmas morning I was in a
cowshed helping my daughter and
her partner milk their cows, a once yearly
retirement ritual after years of milking
cows. I enjoyed a beer at 6am, another
Christmas ritual, but more than that I
enjoyed the fact that Copenhagen was over.
Over too, for a little while, were the news
items about global warming, all with the
obligatory images of cooling towers belch-
ing steam, of ice plunging into the sea, and
the accompanying guilt-laden cries of
morons. I don't personally have anything
against morons but with so many of them at
Copenhagen it had all been too much.
It is not that I am heartless and it is not
that I don't believe it is possible that burn-
ing fossil fuel could change the climate but
my emotions are triggered by facts. At
Copenhagen we heard no facts. We heard
cries for money from the sinking atolls of
the Pacific and from the bankrupt nations of
Africa. Eco debt, emission debt and historic
climate debt were the words they invented
to maximise the guilt of the rich and with it
the pool of money available for the begging
bowls of the poor nations.
Whether these nations are in fact victims
of climate change or the natural sinking
process of the volcanos on which atolls
form, or whether the entrenched corruption
of Africa is the real villain, we can only
speculate. Science used to be able to give us
the facts about atolls and other things, and
we used to believe what it told us but sci-
ence has been corrupted and we don't all
believe the scientists anymore. The truth
has become expendable even to them; glob-
al warming is more important than the truth.
If weather stations have to be invented and
figures changed, it is done.
But all is not lost; two recent polls
showed that the majority of New Zealanders
do not subscribe to the doomsayers' cries.
Despite a complicit media the global warm-
ers are outnumbered by those for whom
facts still matter. These people are open
minded, they are not deniers or skeptics; if
facts emerge they will make their call.
Meanwhile they support measures that
make environmental sense.
What we do not support however is the
closed mind and the corruption that goes
with it -- whether it is a leader of an African
nation, a climate scientist or a New Zealand
politician or journalist. Those who promote
non-facts as facts are dishonest. These peo-
ple are everywhere, they call carbon dioxide
a pollutant when it is not, and they call
farmers polluters even though methane it is
not a pollutant either. They blame agricul-
ture for global warming despite agricul-
ture's contribution to changes in the atmos-
phere never having been established.
They ignore that fossil sourced methane
has increased and that the atmospheric con-
centration of methane has not increased in
the last 30 years -- even though consump-
tion of meat and dairy products has dou-
bled.
They call farmers carbon polluters out of
lack of charity or ignorance. Those that lack
charity use the derogatory and insulting
terms of pollution and polluter to further
their cause. Others do not know the defini-
tion of a pollutant and that carbon dioxide
is a source of life not death. For these peo-
ple I have a New Year's wish: the wisdom
of knowledge and the charity to use it.
• Robin Grieve is chairman of Pastural
Farming Climate Research Inc, an organi-
sation set up to seek and promote the truth
about agricultural emissions.
robin@farmcarbon.co.nz
A New Year's wish in the wake of Copenhagen
By
Robin
Grieve